


Think

by ysande



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 22:17:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9144676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ysande/pseuds/ysande
Summary: "You gentlemen seem not to realise," Ezra said mildly, "that we are equipped with brains as well as guns."In which lawyers are boring, and Ezra is braver than he realises. (Written in 2008)





	

"You gentlemen seem not to realise," Ezra said mildly, "that we are equipped with brains as well as guns."

JD looked at him with barely constrained irritation.

Chris shot him a glare of outright belligerence.

Ezra could forgive them, he supposed. It was Mary and Casey holed up in the office of the Clarion with the three angry, demanding gunmen. Nettie was in there, too. No wonder Vin was so unusually agitated. 

"This is not the time for rash action," he reiterated. "There are three gunmen and three hostages. If we enter in a hostile fashion, the odds of an innocent casualty are unacceptably high."

"What do you suggest, then?" growled Chris, clearly not in the mood to do anything but burst in, guns blazing.

Ezra smiled. "Mister Wilmington identified the miscreants as former soldiers, did he not?" he said.

"What of it?" demanded JD hotly.

Ezra held up one finger. "What does a soldier hate more than anything else in the world?" he prompted. 

"Bureaucracy," Ezra replied to his own question, when it became clear that the only other answers he would get were of the angry glare variety.

"Bureaucracy," Chris repeated flatly. "We're gonna defeat them with bureaucracy."

"And its powerful tools of endless legal clauses, red tape and sheer, mind-numbing boredom," Ezra agreed.

"You're outta your mind," said Vin.

Ezra's eyes glittered.

Half an hour later, he was nearly unrecognisable. He'd donned a sombre brown suit, a little too short in the arms and legs, and so awfully drab that it was painful to look at. His hair was parted unflatteringly at one side, and he'd obtained a pair of spectacles from somewhere. They perched precariously on the bridge of his nose and gave him a squinting, near-sighted air. Powder had been applied to give his skin an unhealthy pallor. He carried a stack of foolscrap paper and a thick book in one hand and three pens and bottle of ink in the other.

He shuffled to the Clarion office and gave a couple of perfunctory knocks on the door.

It was jerked roughly open, and a large hand reached out to yank him inside. Ezra was quicker, though, sidling into the room before he could be manhandled.

"Ezra P. Standish, attorney at law, at your service," he said in a reedy, nasal voice, hoping fervently that none of the women would react too strongly to his sudden and unusual appearance. Casey had the wild eyes and nervous demeanor of a skittish horse. Ezra prayed that she wouldn't get so worked up that she'd do something that would endanger herself - or him, for that matter.

"Attorney?" demanded the man who'd tried to grab him. "We don't want no damn lawyer! Just hand the gold over and we'll let your women go."

Ezra peered short-sightedly at him over the glasses. "What do you think I am trying to achieve, sir?" he said peevishly. "A little paperwork is all that's required, yes indeed. After all, only a legal transaction is a binding one!" He gave a chuckle at the feeble joke which was so unfunny that he privately doubted that it really was a joke.

"So yer gonna give us the money?" the man demanded, thrown off balance by this little man and his aura of fastidious certainty.

Ezra adjusted his spectacles, which were in fact turning the world into a dizzying blur. "Yes indeed, after some routine negotiations and calculations of adequate compensation."

"Negotiations?" a second man said in confusion. "About what?"

Ezra waved a hand in dismissal. "Only as a matter of custom, yes indeed, to make the contract legal, you understand. _Tu es stultior quam asinus_ , as the maxim goes."1

"What contract?" demanded the third man. "Look here, we want the money, and you're going to give it to us, or we're going to have some sport with these fine ladies over here and then shoot them."

"And then we'll shoot you," the first man added ominously.

Ezra made a clucking noise and shook his head. "A deed of release, gentlemen, will stand between your good selves and the law, should it ever attempt to apprehend you for your actions today. Mmhm. Never underestimate the power of a deed of release, gentlemen."

All three men looked puzzled. The second man looked vaguely hopeful. "Look here, is he sayin' that he can give us some kinda pardon even before we get the money?"

Ezra rounded on him with insipid delight. "Indeed, my friend, you understand the point with astounding clarity. _Utinam barbari spatium proprium tuum invadant_ , as the esteemed Lord Denning once said."2

"Reckon he's telling the truth?" the third man asked suspiciously.

"He _sounds_ like a lawyer," the second man mumbled.

"Reckon only a lawyer could sound as much an ass as that," the first man grunted, and turned to Ezra, who resisted with great difficulty the urge to use more latin on the miscreants. "Alright, sign us up for this deed. And make sure you have the gold ready. Or we shoot the women."

"Ah, yes indeed, but first it would be prudent to go through the terms of the contract, hmm?" Ezra said punctiliously.

And he proceeded to talk.

And talk.

And talk.

He watched the men's eyes glaze over. In fact, when he stole a surreptitious glance at the three women, he was amused to find that Casey had dozed off, her head resting against Nettie's shoulder. So much for his worries about her nerves. Boredom was a powerful weapon.

"And that concludes the initial terms of the contract," Ezra droned.

"The _initial_ terms?" exploded the first man. "You talked for near on forty minutes!"

Ezra tut-tutted. "Detail is the heart and lifeblood of a contact, my dear man," he chided. " _Si me rogas, potes abire et tu ipse cacare,_ as they say." 3 He paused, flicked through the heavy tome he'd brought, and seemed to settle on one passage in particular. "There are still there terms of monetary recompense and the signing of the deed to contend with. Mmhm."

All Ezra wanted to do was keep them talking. Or listening, as the case was. As long as they were conversing, guns were much less likely to be pulled. And the longer he could keep talking, the more boredom and complacency would weigh upon them, and the less prepared they would be for any sudden action on Ezra's part. Ezra thanked his innate ability to form an unending stream of words - although ninety nine words out of a hundred were pure nonsense.

"Twenty thousand dollars, in gold," growled the first man. "We're not taking a penny less."

"Hmm, well," Ezra pondered. "There is the issue of the direct value of your consideration, you see. You have before you three women who you assume has a combined worth of twenty thousand dollars, but I'm afraid you've made an error in your calculations."

"Error?" his opponent snapped. "There has been no error!"

"Although you flatter these ladies with your overestimation," Ezra continued blandly, disregarding the outburst, "their combined worth is closer to thirteen thousand dollars. One is a wizened crone - I would estimate her value to be no more than three thousand dollars. While Mrs Travis appears a lovely young woman, she is in fact a widow, and I could not, in good conscience, attribute her value to be greater than four thousand dollars. And the young Miss Wells here, although a capable hand with livestock, is a country girl in the end, and her value must be capped at five thousand dollars."

Even as he spoke, Ezra could feel the glares of Mrs Travis and Mrs and Miss Wells drilling into the back of his head. The hairs on his neck stood on end. He was going to pay for that statement, he was sure of it... but at that moment, the only thought that ran through his mind was to keep the men distracted, and that meant keeping them listening.

They argued about the value of the "consideration" a little more (and Ezra sincerely hoped that the women's feelings would be salved by hearing how adamantly the miscreants demanded that their value as hostages be increased), and eventually settled at the sum of sixteen and a half thousand dollars.

Ezra rubbed his hands together in apparent satisfaction. "And to finalise the contract, gentlemen, all that is required is for you to put your name and signature to these documents here-- and here-- and here-- oh, and initial here, if you would be so kind. And I shall countersign once you have been so good as to swear upon the Bible that you will uphold your end of the contract, yes indeed."

"I never heard of no-one needin' to swear on the Bible for a contract," the third man mumbled, but the first man's glare forced him to silence.

"I'd swear on the grave of my mother if it'd shut this man up!" he groaned. "I'm beginning to think we shoulda taken our chances with bein' on the run. Just sign the damn thing and we can get our money and leave this bloody town."

"Gunbelts on the bench, please," Ezra said fussily, doing his best to look bored and disinterested while his heart began to race.

Again it was the second man who baulked. "I ain't disarming myself," he snapped defensively.

"While your sentiment may be a valid one, sir," Ezra said obsequiously, "nevertheless, it would invalidate the whole contract if you were to blaspheme the Good Lord by bearing arms while taking an oath on His holy book - the maxim behind that one is _Te odeo, interfice te cochleare_ ,4 I believe - and that would require--"

"Just do what he says!" ordered the first man, who unbuckled his own gun belt and slapped it down on the table.

Ezra watched with a racing heart as he watched the other two men do the same, although with much greater reluctance. He nodded to the pens which sat in the inkwell - three pens, to occupy three hands - and held his breath as all three of them picked up a pen at the same time. 

His derringer sprang into his hand, quicker than thought, and he squeezed the trigger once - twice - and saw two men fall before they'd even looked up from their pages.

The third man posed more of a challenge. His derringer only carried two shots, and Ezra had not dared to bring a bigger weapon, lest it be discovered on him and ruin his ruse. His opponent looked shocked at the sudden defeat of his allies, but recovered with an outraged roar, charging towards Ezra as though he'd kill him with his bare hands.

Ezra sidestepped the main force of the blow and the heavy, wood-bound book at the man's face. The two of them grappled for a moment, Ezra fighting to maintain his position against a man who was both taller and heavier than he was. He grunted as the man's fist caught him in the jaw and again in the solar plexus. He struck back with a kick against the man's knee, bringing him to the floor, but his opponent dragged Ezra with him, huge hands closing around Ezra's throat as he did so, cutting off Ezra's air supply.

Ezra gasped and struggled violently against the unyielding hands, but darkness was quickly filling his vision, and his arms and legs no longer felt like they belonged to him. 

This was a most undignified way to die, he thought grimly to himself, but even his thoughts seemed detached. Ezra gathered up his strength - feeling more of it dissipate even as he tried - and used the last of it to throw the two of them backwards, slamming against the shelf where Mary kept her heavy jars of ink, tomes of records and typewriter. 

Ezra dimly heard the crash as the shelf collapsed, then something hard struck him on the temple and all he knew was blackness.

He woke to a dim room, a soft bed and a headache so savage that even his eyelids hurt. After a few feeble attempts, he managed to raise a hand to the spot that seemed to hurt the most, wincing when his tentative fingers found a large, tender knot just above his right ear.

"Ez? You awake? How're you feeling? Don't touch that bruise..." A low, rumbling voice and calloused but gentle hands. Nathan.

Ezra swallowed, trying to convince his tongue to start working again. All he managed was a strangled croak. Nathan helped him sit up, and held a cup to his lips. Ezra was so thirsty that he didn't even mind (too much, at least) the bitter aftertaste that lurked beneath the sweetness of the water.

"Mary? Nettie and Casey?" he said hoarsely, when he had finished.

"Safe and unharmed," said Chris' voice, which surprised Ezra, because he'd thought that he was alone with Nathan. 

"Don't know what you did in there, Ez, but those women can't decide whether they want to kiss you or shoot you." Chris sounded very amused. Ezra groaned. He'd saved their lives - abandoned all dignity in the process - even been knocked out by an errant typewriter - but all they wanted to remember were a few imprudent words.

Vin laughed, and Ezra's fuzzy brain realised that they must all be in the room with him. "Think they're gonna settle on kissin' you, though."

Ezra bolted upright in panic - or tried to, at least, until the blinding pain in his head convinced him that movement would be a very unwise decision. "Good lord, no," he gasped. "If Casey kisses me, JD'll shoot me, and if Mary kisses me..."

More laughter. Ezra's uncooperative brain couldn't see the humour in it. He was doomed either way.

"Shoulda just let Chris handle it," he mumbled, words beginning to slur from the influence of the blow to his head and Nathan's decoction.

A hand rested on his forehead, very gently, mindful of the injury.

"You did good, Ezra," Chris said softly, and it was the last thing Ezra heard before sleep claimed him again. 

\---

1 You are dumber than an ass.  
2 May barbarians invade your personal space.  
3 If you ask me, you can go soil yourself.  
4 I despise you. Kill yourself with a spoon.


End file.
